After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

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After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away Page 9

by Joyce Carol Oates


  And there’s Ryan Moeller in her baggy shirt, sweater, size-fourteen jeans carrying her tray past our table, staring at me like she can’t believe her eyes. Quickly I look away. I don’t want Trina Holland and her friends to associate me with this sad-fattish sophomore girl drifting by our table alone.

  My new life now, with Trina Holland.

  Always there’s something-to-happen.

  21

  Cell phone rings, and it’s Trina.

  Now I’m never lonely. Even alone, I’m not. ’Cause I can call Trina’s cell. ’Cause Trina has said for me to call. Anytime. Day or night. Even if Trina doesn’t answer, I can leave a message: Hi, Trina, it’s Jenna, just checking in.

  Next time my cell rings, it’s Trina.

  “…was saying, you were in some wreck, Jenna? I guess it wasn’t the same one Crow was in, though.”

  Trina is brushing inky black mascara on her eyelashes. She’s leaning close to the mirror, almost falling into the mirror. Taking a long drag from her cigarette, she gives it to me to hold. Not a joint but a cigarette. The smoke makes my eyes water, my throat close up.

  I’m surprised that Trina would ask this question. As if Trina doesn’t know Crow all that well.

  I tell her no. The car crash I was in wasn’t anywhere around here. It happened last spring.

  I’m anxious. I have told Trina too much. But she doesn’t ask me about the crash. Like she hasn’t been listening. Peering at herself critically in the mirror. Taking another drag on her cigarette, exhaling, and saying, as she’s said before, that Crow isn’t reliable.

  “He’s the coolest guy, but. He’s been into girls so long you can’t, like, make an impression on him, and I hate that. Other guys, you can be special with them. But Crow, he’s sangfroid, what he calls it—cold-blooded.”

  I’m not sure what Trina means. If this is French, she’s pronouncing it flat, like English: sangfroyd.

  “Not that he isn’t sexy. Oh, man. Crow is. But like, afterward. His mind just drifts off. He’s got family up in Canada, I guess. He’s got some secret kind of life. Like he says he wants to hang out, but he never shows up. Won’t give me his cell number either. That’s Crow for you. There’s older girls after him, in town. Like, in their twenties? Like, married? I swear. Crow smokes weed, but he’s off other stuff now, know why? T-Man says Crow almost died, snorting some crystal. Really pure crystal, you know? Maybe you don’t, Jenna. Better if you don’t. Crow nearly died, and it scared him. He was in with older guys then. They had to take him to the ER, like his heart had stopped? Oh, man. Glad I didn’t know Crow then. My friend Gil Rathke—he’s really cool, he’s older—was saying they were really freaked, Crow wasn’t, like, breathing, his buddies kind of panicked and, like, left him off there…at the ER…sort of, like, on the sidewalk?…’cause, see, they were scared of cops. Crow wasn’t pissed at them, I guess—Crow’s into, like, forgiving—anyway, they saved his life, Crow says. Weird, I was, like, this little kid then. Sophomore, like you. Seems sooooo long ago.” Trina laughs. She has finished with her mascara, and her eyes look really bright, glistening, beautiful. The curved silver pin in her eyebrow is glittering like a fishhook. Her lips are a rich dark plum purple, you can see why a guy would be turned on by them. The little coiled green snake on Trina’s wrist looks like its scales are glittering too. Trina sees me admiring the tattoo. “Crow and me, we got our tattoos at the same time. There’s a guy out by the lake, a tattoo artist. It’s like wearing the same rings, I mean, like wedding bands? ’Cause Crow and Trina, we are close. It only just pisses me off, Crow has such a thing for, like, hurt people. Crippled people and losers.” Trina’s sharp little chin juts out like she’s daring me to disagree.

  Hurt. Crippled people and losers. Trina didn’t mean this. I don’t think so. Trina Holland is my closest friend, she can’t be wanting to hurt me, can she?

  22

  Why’d I miss dinner? Why, three times this week?

  I’m sullen, sulky. It pisses me off, having to explain like I’m a little kid.

  Like adults explain why. Like my father ever did.

  Oh, man! Like Trina would say, adults fuck you over and never say why.

  Why didn’t I call home when I knew I was going to be late?

  I did. I think I did. My cell wasn’t working.

  Maybe the battery is low. Whatever.

  Why’d somebody call from school? I don’t know. I attended all my classes this week. I think I did. Some of my teachers, they are always in my face. It’s like they hate me ’cause I’m a transfer.

  No, I wasn’t drinking beer on school property! I was not.

  I was not smoking on school property! If somebody saw me, they are lying.

  Aunt Caroline is saying, Jenna, we need to talk. Please.

  Aunt Caroline is looking hurt. Aunt Caroline is looking angry.

  Uncle Dwight is nervous, asking what’s wrong. Jenna, we need to talk.

  Damn, I can’t make it inside and up the stairs before they hear me. Before they catch me. Smell my breath.

  Trina took my sailor cap from me and wouldn’t give it back, saying it was ugly. Wish I had it now, to yank down on my head.

  Wish Trina were with me now, she’d tell my aunt and my uncle to mind their own business. F---off, Trina would say.

  Wild! What Trina would say. I’m trying not to laugh. Buzz at the back of my head. In my mouth beer tastes soooo sour, but once it’s swallowed, once that buzz starts…

  Jenna, please. Look at us, please.

  Jenna? What is so funny?

  …at the mall. With my friends. No, not the guys. Just my girl friends. You don’t know them. I said we went to the Cinemax, can’t think of the name of the movie. We ate there. At the mall. No, I don’t remember. No, I said it was just girls. I said we weren’t with guys. Somebody gave us a ride, okay? A ride to the mall. No big deal. How do I know when the mall closes? I’m not checking the time every five minutes. Who’s spying on me, whose business is it? I tried to call you, I said. I’m not lying. I worked hard on that paper. It’s because I’m a transfer to Yarrow High, which I hate, and they know it. The teachers know it. My English teacher knows it. Any chance he can, he makes fun of me. Stares at me. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is a novel that made me anxious, see. I knew how it would end. I knew. I hated it, the feelings that I would have, so I guess I never finished it exactly. I never read the last chapter. Flipping through the novel back to front, I thought: Anybody’s life could be a story you would not know how it ended, except somebody who didn’t know you at all might know, flipping through the pages of your life and not even caring. And that freaked me. So it was hard to write a paper on Of Mice and Men like Mr. Smart-Ass Farrell wanted, so I guess I didn’t write a paper exactly. Something I printed off the Internet. I don’t even remember. Why’d I do it, I told you. I did not cut so many classes. I did not cut gym class. I like gym class. I like my teacher Ms. Bowen. I tried to call you, I said. Not my fault if the cell battery is dead. Not my fault if you don’t believe me. If you think I’m lying. If you think I’m lying, maybe I shouldn’t be living in this house with you. Maybe I don’t deserve to live in this house with you.

  If you can’t trust me, I mean.

  If I can’t trust you.

  23

  “Baby, come on.”

  Trina is laughing at me. The look on my face. The dazed way I’m blinking and staring.

  Thinking: Trina Holland lives here? In this house?

  Trina laughs just a little impatiently. Pinches me like to wake me up. My head’s still ringing from high-decibel Metallica pounding inside T-Man’s SUV. My eyes are still watery from so much cigarette smoke. And I’m trying not to hiccup from the beer. This house Trina says casually is hers is so surprising to me, so awesome I guess I can’t believe it, almost. All this while thinking Trina Holland is what Ryan calls trailer trash, and it turns out that the Hollands’ house is twice the size of the McCartys’ house—and the Moellers’—and much more expensive.<
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  I guess I’d been picking up that Trina isn’t what you’d call poor. From remarks she’s made, the kind of spoiled-sounding things a rich girl might say, and the fact that some of Trina’s things are expensive, like her boots, which are actual leather, not fake, her wristwatch she keeps losing, her wallet.

  We’re walking up the driveway to Trina’s house. T-Man has let us out on the street. After school we’d been hanging out at the mall with Kiki Weaver, but Kiki’s mom came to pick her up, saying we should come with her too, she’d drive us both home, but Trina wasn’t in the mood, so luckily we ran into T-Man and his friends. T-Man drives his SUV so fast, laughs, swerving into somebody else’s lane and cutting them off, I’m in the backseat, jamming my fists against my mouth, not wanting anybody to know how scared I am, how I’m thinking: They don’t know. They don’t know what it is like when the vehicle you are riding in begins to lose control, swerves, and crashes, and when screaming is so raw in your throat, it feels like flame. And that half second when you begin to know you have lost control but can’t get it back. My friends don’t know.

  It’s cold tonight. Our breaths are steaming. There’s snow everywhere, but out here by the golf course, on Trina’s street with the fancy name, Palmer Woods Pass, there’s more snow than in town, now in the dusk it looks sort of bluish, long, graceful hills like dunes, like something sculpted. And Trina’s house she doesn’t so much as glance at is so beautiful. From the street you can see Christmas lights winking inside: white and blue. A tall Christmas tree in the front window like a display window. Every house I’ve seen on Palmer Woods Pass is large like the Hollands’ house and new-looking, lavishly decorated for Christmas, so it looks like they’re floating in an ocean of snow.

  I tell Trina her house is beautiful. Trina mumbles what sounds like “Sure.” Like she’s embarrassed or—who knows why?—pissed at me.

  Maybe because it’s so obvious? That the house Trina lives in is beautiful? It’s like “Well, duh,” Trina wants me to know.

  Or maybe Trina is embarrassed she’s a rich man’s daughter. Not like the crowd she hangs with.

  Why we’re here I’m not sure. Trina’s mom kept calling her on her cell, leaving messages more and more frantic: Trina, where are you? Trina, you know you are grounded until Sunday. Trina, if I don’t hear from you, I am going to report you as a runaway to the state police; they will bring you home in a squad car, which made us all laugh. Trina says her mom is crazy but she’d better check in, calling the cops on her is the kind of crazy thing her mom might do. But when Trina tried to call her mom back, the line was always busy. So T-Man has dropped us off, I’m not sure if he’s coming back to pick us up. If I call Aunt Caroline, she’ll be upset, she doesn’t like me spending so much time with Trina, not that she knows anything about Trina. When I’m late getting home, Trina advises me how to talk to Aunt Caroline: always calm and polite to get your way, never brattish; adults are waiting for you to be brattish so they can attack. Already I’ve used the excuse that I’m doing my homework with Trina Holland because her dad has a special computer for research. When I tell Aunt Caroline this, she is always eager to believe.

  “Into the belly of the beast, baby. Hold your breath.”

  Trina keeps nudging me in the back, pushing me forward. We’re entering her house by a side door, into a kitchen where lights are dimmed. Just a light above the most beautiful stove I have ever seen, and another light recessed in the ceiling above a breakfast nook. The Hollands’ kitchen is twice the size of the McCartys’ kitchen, like something you’d see in a showroom. There’s a smell here of burn and scorch and a sweetish rancid smell like something has spoiled. The sink is filled with scummy gray water, plates are soaking there, and more plates are stacked on the counter. The door of the dishwasher is down, but the cleaned plates haven’t been unloaded.

  On a kitchen chair is a messy stack of newspapers, takeout food packages, grocery bags. I step on something that turns out to be a fork. It’s weird, in a kitchen so modern and obviously expensive, that trash is accumulating.

  Trina kicks the fork across the floor. Pokes me in the back, to keep me moving.

  In my ear hissing, “Shhh!” Like we’re burglars breaking into Trina’s own house.

  The house is so large and sprawling, and we hear voices in the distance that might be TV voices or a woman talking on a phone. Trina slips ahead of me now, tugging at my wrist. The air inside the house is hot as a greenhouse. After the freezing air outside, my cheeks burn. The woman’s voice is louder, shrill and incredulous as if she’s arguing with someone. Trina pulls me to the stairs covered in plush maroon carpeting just as a woman drifts past a doorway into the living room, not noticing us, she’s so intent on her cell phone. All I can see of this woman is she’s about Aunt Caroline’s age, and her hair is a fake-looking jet black fastened around her head in fussy little combs, and she’s wearing some kind of silk robe that falls to her ankles and causes her to stumble. Behind her is the living room with a cathedral ceiling, skylights. At the farther end is the twelve-foot Christmas tree decorated in white and blue winking lights.

  Trina whispers in my ear, “Come on.” I’m surprised, she’s pulling me up the stairs with her instead of speaking with her mother. I’d been thinking the purpose of returning to her house was to check in with Mrs. Holland so she wouldn’t call the cops on Trina. “I need some things. You stand lookout.” Trina is wearing a bulky jacket with a hood, she could be a boy of eleven or twelve. She switches on the light in her room and runs to a closet to rummage through shelves and drawers, tossing things behind her onto the floor. I’m staring at Trina’s room. It’s large with several windows, but it looks as if a whirlwind has rushed through it. Everywhere underfoot are clothes, underwear, shoes, boots, pillows, schoolbooks, stuffed animals. Trina’s pretty white wicker bed hasn’t been made, bedclothes and towels are twisted together. There’s the sweet smoky smell of pot mixed with a sharper smell like dirty laundry and old sneakers. The walls are almost entirely covered in rock band posters and photos, tacked on top of one another. On the wall above Trina’s desk are Polaroid pictures of Crow on his Harley-Davidson, in a black leather jacket, dark glasses. His spiky black hair is longer than I’ve seen it. He’s wearing fingerless black gloves. In one of the pictures, Trina in low-slung jeans and a tiny red halter top is nestled in the crook of Crow’s arm, her arm slung around his shoulders.

  Trina sees me staring. She says, “Oh, man. That guy is just so totally, totally sexy.”

  Trina has shoved a few articles of clothing into her jacket pockets—sweater, panties, socks. Plus what looks like a blue plastic Baggie containing something loose.

  I don’t ask what this is. If Trina wants to tell me, she will.

  Coming downstairs, I can see into the living room to the farther end, where the twelve-foot Christmas tree is winking white and blue lights in the window. The Hollands’ house is decorated for Christmas like something in a magazine. On the fireplace mantel are sprigs of evergreen. Pots of poinsettias with petals wilting in the heat, more Christmas lights, gilt-framed mirrors. In the midst of this, like somebody drifting in a dream, Trina’s mother comes swaying in gripping a cell phone in one hand and a wineglass in the other.

  Trina says in a sharp, teasing voice, “Say hi to my mom, Jenna.”

  Mrs. Holland has stopped dead in her tracks. She’s staring and blinking at us as if she’s having trouble seeing.

  I mumble hello as Trina prods me forward, saying in the same sharp, teasing voice, “Mom, this is my friend Jenna.”

  “Jenna. Why, hello…”

  Mrs. Holland squints at me as if my face is supposed to be familiar to her but she can’t remember it. The way she’s swaying upright reminds me of a cobra I’ve seen on TV. There is something spade-shaped and flat about her face, like a cobra’s. And her eyes are small and close set. Her eyebrows have been plucked thin. Her face is pretty but creased and puffy beneath the eyes, and her hair looks like a glamor wig. What’s shocking
is the sash of her pink silk kimono is loose, so I can see a ridge of fat at her waist and part of a sagging breast sickly white like a mollusk.

  Trina whispers in my ear, reckless now her mother is so close, “‘Belly of the beast’—see what I mean?” and slips past me, and past her mother, like a small child daring to run away, leaving her mother and me to stare at each other.

  Mrs. Holland is frowning at me, asking what is my name? who are my parents? where do I live? am I in Trina’s class at the high school? and I mumble answers, trying to smile politely and not to sound rattled the way I am when Trina plays some trick like this with a guy, practically shoving me into him, dancing away giggling what sounds like Here’s Jenna, she wants to suck your dick, except you can’t be sure what Trina has said, you have to pretend you haven’t heard.

  (I can’t be angry at Trina, she does this with anybody she likes. Even some of the guys. It’s how you know Trina Holland likes you, this kind of teasing.)

  Mrs. Holland doesn’t listen to much of what I say, she’s chattering about something in a hurt, girlish voice. I can understand why Trima slipped away. Mrs. Holland’s voice would give you a headache in five minutes. She’s complaining about Trina, I guess, or about somebody who was supposed to “cater” a party for her but has canceled at the last minute: “She knew this relative was dying, he’s been dying for months, it’s her professional responsibility to fulfill her obligation to a customer, don’t my feelings matter too?”

  Mrs. Holland has forgotten she was speaking on the cell phone, she’s startled by a shrill little voice squawking out of it, drops the cell phone, grabs at it but misses it, it clatters to the floor and breaks into three pieces, somehow the wineglass slips through her fingers too and shatters on the floor. Mrs. Holland cries, “Oh oh oh! Oh, no!” Dark-red wine has splattered up onto the beautiful silk kimono. Nasty-looking pieces of glass are glittering on the marble floor. I don’t know where Trina has gone, somewhere in the living room, but for sure, she isn’t in a hurry to investigate her mother’s cries and what the accident is.

 

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